Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

Complete and utter nonsense, in fact, dangerously wrong.
The fact you actually believe this utter stupidity is worrying.

You preach about equality, and then suggest the exact opposite.

You pick the candidate best suited to the job.
Its irrelevnt if one is male/female/whatever or black/brown/white/whatever.

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

The point of unconscious bias is exactly the point you make - we all have preferences, and like hires like, be that in teaching, IT, caring, etc.

To (try and) mitigate those preferences, it’s important to reduce the impact of those unconscious biases - remove identifying info from CVs, so people get to the next stage on the info on their CV, not by their names/sex/ethnicity. Then have diverse interview panels - if the interview panel for nursery teachers is made up of all women, they are likely to hire more of the same (just like in IT/engineering if it’s all men).

It’s not about positive discrimination, it’s about trying to create a level playing field…

Re the over-representation of one sex in certain professions, I actually had that conversation with a previous boss (a University Vice-Chancellor, female), who commented on the overwhelming preponderance of men in our IT Department - I agreed with her, and explained the actions we were taking to balance this (as above), but pointed out that perhaps the same issue should be looked at in Libraries (University), as their staffing levels were equally misbalanced with women…

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You’re not making the point you think you are…

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

I haven't indicated my personal thoughts on the matter, I merely reacted to your point about my understanding of what point I think she's trying to get across.

My example was referring to a situation where two remaining candidates are of equal merit. I don't think that she was suggesting that someone that had less merit should be given the job because of ethnicity etc.

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A lot of organisations now purposely don't disclose the names of the candidates, in order to prevent unconscious bias/discrimination by interview panels.

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

They shouldn't be given the job because of skin colour, sexuality, or anything if everything is equal (highly doubtful, there is always something that stands out).

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

But that is the case under existing law. This is nothing new.

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

Which law?

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

The Equalities Act 2010. As we’ve been saying to you, existing legislation is already adequate.

https://assets.publishing.service.go...ecruitment.pdf

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

All this means is that employers are able to use positive action to increase the number of employees from underepresented groups in the total workforce without fear of prosecution for discrimination. There is no requirement for them to this, which I took you to mean.

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

This should always be the case but unfortunately has not been reality for years because of quotas and stuff for diversity.

It leads to bizarre things too in media. Ignoring the 50% female quota on panel shows quota that Cohen brought in, meaning instead of comedians they are having random non-funny females who look lost to fit that quota, we also have comedians who can't speak clearly because of say cerebral palsy or not at all like lost-voice guy or whatever his name is.

We wouldn't employ someone with no arms to be a carpenter fitting kitchens because....common sense but that seems to go out the window when it comes to tv and movie. But I don't get why diversity quotas are used to select the no-where near front runner candidate in many jobs. Its plain stupid.

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

I have never seen hired, or hired, a candidate due to mythical "diversity quotas" - it was always the best person for the job, scored objectively (as far as possible, to a pre-agreed set of questions, so every interviewee was asked and scored in the same things) by a interview panel (usually 3 to 5 people), with scoring reviewed (and justified) after the interviews, and that information stored by HR.

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

Ditto, but then my days of doing this were many years ago, before many of these insane ideas kicked in.

They were all IT jobs - 5 (over time) as I recall.
In one case, we had about 10/15 applicants, of which only one was female.
She however was very good, and it soon became apparent she knew her stuff.
(unlike some of the others [men] who applied, Im sure some of them barely even knew what a computer was).

I hired her, not because she was a girl, but becasue she was obviously damn good at IT.

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

It should not be a requirement. If you have two candidates who equally meet the person specification, you should be able to use other criteria to determine the best fit, such as being able to come up with imaginative alternatives as demonstrated in answer to interview questions, or has practical experience of dealing with circumstances that have proved problematical to the previous incumbents of that position, for example. As long as there is a non-discriminatory reason for the selection, that’s all that should matter.

Positive discrimination requirements forced on people by the state cause resentment, which can lead to bad feelings towards the minority group concerned.

You cannot make people perfect because human beings aren’t perfect. And the more you try to force people to abide by a myriad of rules in the flawed objective of achieving ‘equality’, the less people will want to do the job and the more those who end up doing the job will find ways around them.

The perfect job can become the perfect nightmare when you tie people up with bureaucracy. It’s not on, Richard, and we should not be proceeding down this road.

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

But we weren't discussing whether this should be compulsory or not, it was you that insinuated that it was "the law" that meant that this was compulsory.

It's almost as if you're trying to swerve the fact that you misinterpreted what the Equality Act says about the subject.

People's language can be improved over time. When I was a child, the N word was in common usage. After years of societal disapproval and subsequent legislation, I have not heard anyone use the word in a derogatory sense since 1986.

As children grow up, they don't get to hear the word and its usage falls into disuse.

Last time a racially abusive word was used in my company, I found young people looking confused as they'd never heard the term before and had to actually ask what it meant.

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Because, despite their difficulties communicating due to disability, right thinking people would rather give disabled people a chance to participate in their chosen field as opposed to excluding them from society.

Lost voice guy has indirectly helped the disabled on many levels and was chosen to be the winner of Britain's Got Talent on merit alone.

Would you prefer that he remained on benefits living an unfruitful life?

Don't forget that nobody is immune from disability, in fact most of us will become disabled at some point in our lives and nobody is forcing you to watch any comedian that you don't enjoy.

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

Not sure that’s the best example of a "quota" since he won the public vote in Britain’s Got Talent 2018…

Re: Police to get tough on internet trolls.
 

We could argue he won on a limited self-depreciation act which after the obvious shock factor jokes is done, there isn't much else left.

He doesn't have to be excluded from society or working if he is not a comedian. If my dream was to be a bikini clad model and influencer, people would right tell me where to poke it as I don't have the body for that. No matter how much I tell them its my dream.

Its a nice story that he became successful but not many people really want to listen to a speak and spell tell jokes slowly.

If I lost the use of my legs tomorrow, I wouldn't insist on being a football player and expect some team to put me on their team virtue signal some quota. We don't do it. Tv and film does.

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You may not but many companies do. I know for certain that two companies I have worked for with a large amount of employees do so.

I'm not sure if its still the case but there was some tax relief of help towards wages for companies that employed disabled people.

I know of someone training to be a firefighter and despite not doing well on some of the training, is going to get one of the places based on the fact she is female. Something she was told by someone higher up and it was related to females being under-represented in the field.